The weak strongman, Ukraine is winning, robot wars, the Escapist origin story
Odds and ends, volume 2
In an influential 1959 book, Erving Goffman looked at life through the lens of theater.
“When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them,” the sociologist wrote in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Some people are “fully taken in” by their own act and believe that it is real; others cynically perform their part knowing in their hearts that it is fake.
In his hit TV show, The Apprentice, Donald Trump played the part of a fabulously successful entrepreneur. In his two terms as president of the United States, Trump has played the role of a strongman. We may never know if he believes this role reflects his inner reality, or is faking it.
But he is certainly investing his energy in attempting to assemble the strongman image. Trump is sending troops to American cities including Portland, Oregon; ordering media organizations, law firms and universities to follow his dictates; telling pregnant women not to take Tylenol; instructing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies including James Comey; slapping tariffs on imported movies, pharmaceuticals and furniture; firing the directors of formerly independent agencies; directing the government to take stakes in major companies; slashing government agencies and foreign aid.
Yet some knowledgeable observers aren’t buying the president’s performance.
“Donald Trump is not a strong president,” wrote Julian Zelizer, for his Substack The Long View.
“Strong presidents know how to use the art of persuasion to win over hearts and minds. They understand how to appeal to voters, mobilize broad political coalitions, build legislative support, and expand beyond their base to further their agendas. Their arguments can be transformative, leaving a legacy that outlasts their time in office,” Zelizer noted, citing Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as prime examples.
Trump’s approval rating is low and few of his policy initiatives have resulted in legislation, beyond the tax bill. “So, what does a president do when he can’t win hearts and minds? He resorts to intimidation and strong-arm tactics — tools of a leader unable to command the national stage otherwise,” Zelizer observed.
Last week Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to end birthright citizenship, going against more than a century of court rulings. My take on the issue:
Now It’s History: Supreme Court’s big birthright case
Billions of robots
In the Wall Street Journal, Tim Higgins wrote that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who once talked of fighting each other in a “cage match,” could be “headed toward a collision involving humanoid robots.” While their companies pursue the potential of AI to super-size the field of robotics, the vision of Tesla’s chief is radical: “By 2040, Musk forecasts, there will be at least 10 billion humanoid robots in the world, remaking the idea of work and life—even if some roboticists say such technology is still a work in progress.” Robots would outnumber people, since the world population of human beings is projected to reach only 9.2 billion by 2040. Of course, Musk predicted in 2014 that people would be traveling to Mars by now.
Wall Street Journal: A New Front Opens Between Zuckerberg and Musk Over Robots
Ukraine is winning
In the Financial Times, Yuval Noah Harari summed up the surprising reality of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine: “In 2025, at a cost of around 200,000 to 300,000 soldiers killed and injured, the Russian army has so far managed to capture just a thin sliver of frontier zone amounting, according to the most reliable sources, to around 0.6 per cent of Ukraine’s total territory. At the rate they have been going in 2025, it would theoretically take the Russians around 100 years and tens of millions of casualties to conquer the rest of Ukraine. In fact, in August 2025, Russia controlled less of Ukraine’s territory than it did in August 2022.”
Financial Times: Why Ukraine is winning the war
Trump at the UN
Andrew Sullivan compared Trump’s speech at the United Nations to a “Sacha Baren Cohen performance.” He noted, “If that august body was aghast, it was because few had ever witnessed, outside a comedy movie, the head of state of a country speak like that before: no dignity, no coherence, no real argument as such, just loopy madlibs and inappropriate outbursts: ‘Your countries are going to hell!’ The America whose values many across the world once aspired to is now, in its public posture, coarse, irrational, emotional, petty. It’s a global joke.”
The Weekly Dish: Our Post-Literate, Post-Liberal Era
The surging far right
“The winds of right-wing populism are once again blowing across Europe,” reports Frida Ghitis. “Parties that had in recent years been relegated to the fringes of the political arena are once again growing stronger, overtaking traditional centrist parties and commanding the lead in opinion polls in Europe’s biggest, most powerful countries.”
“Of course, polls are only a snapshot in time, and in most cases elections are many months, even years away. But already, long before the votes are cast, extremist parties have become a powerful enough force that they are actively shaping political agendas. In Germany, the U.K. and France, far-right parties top the polls today.”
Superheroes
The Blonde Phantom. The Cobra. The Harlequin. The Icicle. Minimidget. Neon the Unknown. Spy Smasher. The Undertaker. Wotan. Yarko The Great.
Those were “Actual Superhero Names” that author Michael Chabon compiled and put on a corkboard when he was writing what became his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
The 25-year-old story of two young cousins who invent a wildly successful superhero comic is now the basis for the Metropolitan Opera’s season-opening production. In a bit less than three hours, the opera can only give the bare outlines of the plot of the 639-page novel, but the inventive performance compels your attention.
In his Substack, Chabon explains that he let his two characters come up with the name of their superhero. He imagines their dialogue:
“A lion?”
“Lion. The Lion. Lionman.”
“He could be strong. He roars very loud.”
“He has a super roar.”
“It strikes fear.”
“It breaks dishes.”
“The bad guys go deaf.”
They laughed. Joe stopped laughing.
“I think we have to be serious,” he said.
“You’re right,” said Sammy. “The Lion, I don’t know. Lions are lazy. How about the Tiger. Tigerman. No, no. Tigers are killers. Shit. Let’s see.”
Their ultimate solution: They call him The Escapist.
And it works.
Thanks, Rich. Below are a few thoughts on the Trump phenomenon offered by Paul Krugman in a Substack column published today. Krugman does not speak to recent polling data, but I think does a good job of identifying how we got here in the first place. /fb
Anyway, the answer to that question is that there are a lot of potential explanations, ranging from rising income inequality and the power of the plutocracy, to the problems of left-behind regions, to men not working, to the injured pride of white men who feel that they have lost their dignity and their privilege, to the social anomie caused by the Internet. Also, racism never went away and has become increasingly overt again. I take all of these issues seriously, but don’t have firm views about their relative responsibility for our current moment of democratic peril. -- Paul Krugman
Interesting reflection about the relationship between strength and weakness, and how the one might look like the other and vice versa in the current incoherent environment. On that note, I've been tempted to write a piece about the systematic and thoroughgoing strategic incoherence of the current administration--from the beginning of the process of strategic logic to the end. Madness, nonsense, stupidity--in short, incoherence--at every step. Unless, that is, the administration has upended our national security strategy priorities without putting it in writing (yet). Instead of the PRC and Russia and complex global challenges like technology and global pandemics (won't even bother mentioning climate) as the main strategic challenges facing our country, the overarching problem now (according to administration ideologues) are the "enemies within". While that gives all these subsequent perverse-seeming steps (ICE raids, sending national guards to placid Democrat-led cities, gathering all the military top brass in one place...) a semblance of surface coherence, it changes nothing at the core. This administration, in pursuit of invented phantoms (whether they believe in these phantoms or not is an open question and not necessarily germane), is destroying everything we thought we knew about this country. Like a doctor mistaking a head cold for colon cancer, and opting for heavy surgery without seeking other professional opinions, least of all those. Sorry for carrying on; I think I just added another odd and end to your collection.